This invention relates generally to carbon nanotube field effect transistors, and more particularly relates to techniques for controllably fabricating and carbon nanotube field effect transistors.
Since their discovery, carbon nanotubes have attracted intense research into their electrical and mechanical properties and have been proposed for implementation in a wide range of electronics as well as mechanical and electromechanical applications. In particular it has been demonstrated that carbon nanotubes are distinctly well-suited for applications including, e.g., microelectronic and nanoelectronic devices and systems, chemical sensors, transducers, displays, physical probes, and energy storage devices.
There is currently fast-growing interest in the fabrication of field effect transistors (FETs) with carbon nanotubes employed as the channels of the transistors. With the experimental demonstration of a nanotube field effect transistor now achieved, the application of nanotube transistors to nanoelectronic technologies is becoming increasingly popular. Nanocomputing, nanosensing, and other nano-scale applications can be well-addressed by nanotube-based devices. To fully realize such nanotube-based devices, reliable production of high-performance semiconducting nanotube FETs is required.